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Improper AuthenticationWeakness · CWE-287

CVE-2024-40648

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-07-18
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
60/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
matrix-rust-sdk is an implementation of a Matrix client-server library in Rust. The `UserIdentity::is_verified()` method in the matrix-sdk-crypto crate before version 0.7.2 doesn't take into account the verification status of the user's own identity while performing the check and may as a result return a value contrary to what is implied by its name and documentation. If the method is used to decide whether to perform sensitive operations towards a user identity, a malicious homeserver could manipulate the outcome in order to make the identity appear trusted. This is not a typical usage of the method, which lowers the impact. The method itself is not used inside the `matrix-sdk-crypto` crate. The 0.7.2 release of the `matrix-sdk-crypto` crate includes a fix. All users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-287

The mechanism that verifies who a user is can be side-stepped or fooled, letting an attacker act as someone they're not. Everything built on top of that identity then becomes untrustworthy. Fixing it means hardening the full authentication flow, including edge cases, tokens, and secondary paths.

General guidance for the improper authentication class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

matrix-sdk-crypto version 0.7.2

  1. Locate the Cargo.toml file that declares the matrix-sdk-crypto dependency
  2. Update the matrix-sdk-crypto version specification to 0.7.2 or later (e.g., `matrix-sdk-crypto = "0.7.2"`)
  3. Run `cargo update matrix-sdk-crypto` to refresh the lock file
  4. Run `cargo build` to compile with the patched version

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-40648 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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